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Ngtc

Infiniti is ready to take on the British Touring Car Championship with this Q50 racer and support for and from British paratroopers, revealed here in its final race livery at the Autosport International show in the UK.

At the Frankfurt Motor Show a couple of weeks ago, Mercedes-Benz showcased a concept racecar based on the CLA. But it looks like its hatchback counterpart will be turning its wheels in anger before the four-door coupe gets a chance.

It's been five months since we first brought you word that Honda was developing a version of its new euro-spec Civic hatchback for competition in the highly competitive British Touring Car Championship. A month later, Matt Neal took home the title for the Japanese automaker behind the wheel of the outgoing Civic touring car. And just a couple of weeks ago, Honda released a quintet of renderings of the version it is preparing in parallel for the World Touring Car Championship.

The field of cars entered in the British Touring Car Championship has grown incredibly in the last year or two. But as quintessentially British as the series is, few of those automakers represented on the grid are actually, you know... British. But that's all about to change with the latest entry from MG.

Of the many motorsport disciplines in which Lotus is competing these days and will be in the near future, the British Touring Car Championship isn't one of them. And of all the manufacturers taking part in the BTCC, Lotus isn't among them. Which could be why race organizers have solicited the services of the Norfolk, England-based engineering consultancy in regulating the performance between the various cars competing in the series.

Of all the new debuts scheduled for the Frankfurt Motor Show – now less than two weeks away – few will proliferate quite like the new European-market Honda Civic. The Old World version of the new Civic has so far only been teased, but the company's UK competition division has already started work on the racing version that will take on the most famous circuits Great Britain has to offer.

The new entries just keep on lining up for the British Touring Car Championship, which is rapidly becoming the most varied racing series in the world. There are already 27 cars based on 13 different models from 10 different manufacturers, but now the touring car series is about to get a 28th, based on a 14th from an 11th, respectively.

You go ahead and try to find a racing series with as high a participation rate as the British Touring Car Championship. With 13 different models from 10 different manufacturers covering 27 entries, the BTCC field is at an all-time high this year. But there's always room for one more.

While archrival BMW may be downscaling its racing program – in touring car series particularly – Audi looks to be going the other way. For evidence, we turn your attention to Exhibit A: a new entry into the British Touring Car Championship for 2011.

Where there's smoke, there's fire. So it was natural to expect that, with the debut of the mildly facelifted Fiat Punto Evo and its smoked headlights, we might expect an updated version of the fire-breathing Abarth to go with it. And this, according to reports, is our first look at just such a hot hatch.